First Person: An Uphill Kind of Love

By Christine Woodside

My family does not think of a snake when we say the word “rattlesnake” to each other. We mean a mountain, our mountain. Rattlesnake Mountain, above Squam Lake in central New Hampshire. We’ll say, “Let’s go up Rattlesnake.” Maybe some families roller-skate or bowl or play touch football. My family climbs Rattlesnake.

Rattlesnake—officially West Rattlesnake Mountain, elevation only 1,260 feet above sea level—has inhabited my family’s collective heart since 1962, when my parents first led me and my three older brothers up it during our vacation at Rockywold Deephaven Camps. While rattlesnake sightings in New Hampshire are extremely rare, the rocky top would make good snake habitat.

The path we took cut through a pasture back then; today, the Pasture Trail runs through half-century-old woods. I was so little on my first climb, age 3, that the grass tops were level with my eyes, squinting in the bright sun. I wore blue canvas sneakers, and as I walked with my mother, who carried lunch in a wicker basket, I felt miserable. Then we entered a young woods.

Hearing my brothers’ yells up ahead, I stopped whining and staggered the last steps with my mother. We emerged onto a rock expanse, beyond which lay the glittering deep blue of Squam Lake framed by fuzzy dark-green shores and blobs of islands. This was the mountain version of falling in love. My mother told me to stay away from the edge, and I obeyed, hanging back by the red pines. My brothers ignored her and ran to the edge.

What had started as a climb up a hill with a picnic lunch became a tradition, a ritual of deep significance. We came to know every trail, and every turn, along with many of the pines that clung to the crevices overlooking Bennett Cove.

It seemed eventually as if the mountain knew us, too, in a way. Going up this hill comprised our urban-dwelling family’s regular reconnaissance with nature and with each other.

We not only hiked Rattlesnake—we ran up it. In the 1970s, Rockywold Deephaven organized a race called the Mountain Marathon, and it went on for a decade. It started on the camp ballfield and proceeded up a back road to the Col Trail and Ridge Trail to the top, then down the gentle slope of the Old Bridle Path to Route 113, then on asphalt back into camp. The route was about three miles long. My three brothers, my sister, and I all ran this race at one time or another. It was a little bit crazy and a little bit hard. Perfect. I would do anything on Rattlesnake.

In all the years our family has been climbing Rattlesnake, I can’t think of a time when anyone—my siblings and I, our spouses, or the 12 children we had among us—tried to beg off going. I haven’t counted the number of times I’ve climbed it, but it’s in the hundreds. I feel the power of returning to a place where I remember particular trees, the curves of the trails, and somewhere a little wild.

Rattlesnake is my reference point for climbing. I have gauged the distance of every other mountain I’ve climbed by how many times I’d have to climb Rattlesnake. Nearby Mount Morgan equals almost four Rattlesnakes. Mount Monadnock in Jaffrey, New Hampshire: roughly four and a half Rattlesnakes. Most of the big peaks in the White Mountains of New Hampshire: at least eight Rattlesnakes, trail-distance-wise.

Maybe it’s a lazy morning, a little cloudy, or an hour and a half before sunset. You’d have time to say, “I think I’ll do Rattlesnake,” and actually do it safely. It is a big mountain in a little uniform, a miniature version of the windblown granite crags that give New Hampshire its personality.

You might start at the Old Bridle Path, off to the southeast of Route 113 between Holderness and Center Sandwich. The switchbacks of this route were designed for horses but are now maintained for people. In 2023, trail workers for the Squam Lakes Association and the University of New Hampshire completed a major restoration of the Old Bridle Path. They fixed drainage and strengthened the treadway with lumber-and-crushed-stone check steps and a few retaining walls—beautiful work.

Or you might do what my family always did: trudge up the steeper south side, starting from Pinehurst Road. A fork near the bottom lets you choose the Col Trail, which leads to the Ridge Trail, a slightly gentler climb to the summit—about eight-tenths of a mile from that fork—or my family’s original route, the Pasture Trail, which scrambles up just four-tenths of a mile from the fork to the cliffs. Or if you feel even more adventurous, you might want to crab-walk your way up the steepest route of all, from Pinehurst Road, the four-tenths-of-a-mile Ramsey Trail that scrambles directly up the cliff side.

That’s our Rattlesnake: the family mountain, where my mother with her bad knee, my father pushing to get into fighting shape, my gazelle-like brothers, my dancer sister, and I all climbed.

It’s my sanctuary. My parents nudged me up the first time and climbed it until they couldn’t anymore. The year my mother died, my siblings and I returned in September; it had been a few years since we’d gathered there. We climbed it together, for her. I felt as if I were pulling Mom up just as she had pushed me up. We all knew what this meant. We all were together again on our mountain.

This feature was originally published as “An Uphill Kind of Love” in the September/October 2026 issue of Yankee.

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